


a demonstration in self-preservation

by shslduelist (joeri)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Bullying, Childhood Trauma, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen, Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 20:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18301088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joeri/pseuds/shslduelist
Summary: or: some snapshots at yusaku's life.The storage container door opens and a great big man pulls out a small black handle and shocks him to sleep. Guess he was undeserving.





	a demonstration in self-preservation

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for episode 93

0.  
A headset, a blanket, and a port-o-potty in the opposite corner of the room. Occasionally a tray of food would come tumbling down when he had performed well enough: a mechanical angel come saving. Sometimes only a juice box. Sometimes only a cookie. Sometimes he had to put his tiny malnourished brain to task in working out whether it was worth it to risk electrocution in exchange for supper. Sometimes the shock was too much. So it went:

Electricity storming through each of his fingers, through all of his hairs, through all of his skin. An empty stomach mocking him. A voice outside reminding to never give up.

Yusaku cried himself dry.

A headset, a blanket, and a port-o-potty in the opposite corner of the room. The headset was for work. The blanket was for pity. The port-o-potty was changed out every day and he didn’t know when it happened or when to catch it but maybe he could stay awake and see it. Maybe he could think ahead of his captors. Maybe he could get ahead of the game.

Maybe he could talk to someone if he stayed awake enough. Maybe he could make an escape if he stayed awake enough. Maybe this could all end if only he held back. Maybe… his family awaited on the other side.

No dueling meant he would have no shocks that day. No dueling meant no eating, and no strength to keep himself awake. Dueling meant keeping his rations up at the risk of torture and pain. He performed the juggling act, making choices based on which was easier to bear.

He slept close to the potty. Someone would enter soon. Someone would empty it. Yusaku could taste freedom soon. He feigned sleep with a set of drowsy reddened eyes. He breathed fog into the corner. Had it become autumn yet? He felt so terribly cold.

The storage container door opens and a great big man pulls out a small black handle and shocks him to sleep. Guess he was undeserving.

  


7.  
Kusanagi’s chest was warm. Face tucked into his hoodie, Yusaku buried his nose into the cottony lines of his wifebeater and took a deep breath. The other man’s arms around him were the first and only of its kind. They comforted and they protected.

The salty scent of Stardust Road filled his nose. It mingled with the aroma of coffee grounds. It passed itself off as the smell of home and it got Yusaku thinking that for once he might’ve found home once more, after it’d been torn apart.

“Yusaku,” whispered Kusanagi gently, “have you been sleeping enough lately?”

He shook his head slow and sure, thinking dimly to himself that this is the closest he’s been to having a restful dream and he lingered wide awake.

Squeezing him tighter, Kusanagi peppered the side of Yusaku’s head with a defensive kiss like a father, like a brother, like _family_ and he said, “I’ll try and fix that soon,” like he’s just a broken clock.

Like he’s just something with pieces that have fallen out of place.

To Yusaku, that’s wonderful. It means there’s still hope for him.

  


3.  
Therapy groups tried to put him back together. Doctors held onto his hand and let him talk when wanted. Let him try and put words to electric impulses and agony and fear, and _rage_ and came up empty when he had nothing to say.

Distraction helped immensely. Television was a boon. Mobile games kept him focused. Computers seemed to interest him. Opening his mouth felt like hell, like a sea of water would flood him surely if he did. Physical touch was unwelcome. Wearing blindfolds made him cry. The sight of Duel Monster cards made his heart seize up. Losing at any and all games came with the vivid reminder of the game loss screen and he’d scream himself blue and need to be held down.

A six year old shouldn’t need holding down.

  


5.  
Yusaku attended a sleepover once but children are mean and children are _children,_ and it wasn’t often for him to sleep in a bed that wasn’t his own. When placed in it, he turned and gawked at the wall the whole night through. He was the lucky one. He’d drawn the lot with the big green dot. That meant he got the bed. Every other child circled up on the floor with a fort they’d made out of comforters and chairs and they giggled all night.

The trauma kept Yusaku awake. The bed was fluffy and comfy in a way storage containers are not and in a way his own ratty sheets weren’t either. Felt like any moment he would be swallowed up by the pillow at his head. He wished he could have. Children are children, after all.

“Can I be _really_ mean?” one child piped up.

“Oh my god, go for it,” the next said.

“Okay, so… why does Fujiki-kun get the bed? He hasn’t even talked this whole—”

The chiming of little children all laughing in agreement turned his fingers bone cold and his throat closed up. His eyes squished shut and he wished he’d been comatose, wished he could’ve went without hearing it, wished they didn’t have to laugh. He didn’t want this bed.

He didn’t even _want_ this bed. Come take it. Take it if he’s so _undeserving._

“I thought it was just me. He never smiles when we play games.”

“He didn’t have any of the birthday cake. Do you think he’s allergic?”

“He doesn’t even look interested. I think he hates us.”

No, he didn’t.

“Why did he even come then?”

 _I don’t know,_ he answered in the loneliness, in the silence of his own mind. The voices cut deep, deeper than he dared to do with his own knife, deeper still than anything he could’ve possibly told himself. The voices gut him hard, teaching him to be cold and as unfeeling as could be: a demonstration in self-preservation.

“No one picks him for kickball. _No one_ I’ve spoken to has a crush on him. Not even that weird girl who comes to school with bugs.”

“Someone should set them up!”

More laughter.

“Someone should tell Fujiki-kun they liiii~ke him.”

“Guys, c’mon,” one boy said in exasperation, unable to hide a snicker underneath.

Yusaku covered his mouth, whimpered as silently as he could muffle. He shook beneath the sheets and made a plea to be back home, or be alone. He’d give anything to be so alone.

The sick, clinical white walls of the container were welcoming compared to this open ridicule. It’s then that Yusaku realized he hadn’t been saved.

  


8.  
Vomiting up beef and mustard again, Yusaku bent down so he wouldn't break anymore, coiling his body up against the toilet until he’d prayed in earnest.

_Not this again._

Undeserving. He felt undeserving—of being alive, of being awake, of being aware and having a home.

Yusaku thought back to Jin sat in the hospital all alone, Jin unable to smile back at his brother, Jin coasting by without a thought in his head, Jin comatose and unfeeling, _and unfeeling—_

He threw up again. Unworthy. He felt unworthy of Kusanagi’s love, of his attention. He fancied himself nothing but a usurper. He'll stand in place until the real boy comes home. He’ll take up space and not do enough. He could _never_ do enough. He could never keep it down—

“Yusaku!?”

Kusanagi sounded panicked. He rushed to his side.

Of course, worrying him. Yusaku worried him again. Of course. Yes. He’s always a burden.

“Talk to me, Yusaku.” Always.

Always the wrong one. Always, always… undeserving.

  


6.  
Suffering bred introversion. Time was spent learning the ins and outs of computer programming, searching to understand and uncover the world that spread so thickly around him. Technology was advancing ever further with every passing day. It should have frightened him, Yusaku thought to himself, computers and science and machines as a whole.

Six months, he’d been strapped in for a ride he had no say in and made a pet project by a man seeking to play God and lose. Never would Yusaku let another person have that kind of flawless power over him again. He opened up a book on C++ Programming. He downloaded tutorials and he put his mind to work. His fingers danced across the keyboard and he smuggled it all down, every bit of knowledge he could. Yusaku could be a sponge. His trauma was proof of that.

No matter how badly he could never pick Duel Monsters up again, he knew he held such proficiency. His power to learn was astronomic. A shame he’d picked it up through hell. Yusaku applied himself to hacking.

Working small odd jobs to discover more and more about the net, about the incident itself, about how to bypass security parameters, Yusaku carved out a little place for him to live: in the cracks of the Internet where the entire world had forgot him, and could do so without penalty. This place where only he thrived. He needed nobody else.

He explored how to hack into major corporation mainframes and how to tie a noose if that didn’t work.

  


4.  
It started with scratching, nails up his arm. It started with sitting in the shower with the heat on too high and letting it scorch down his back. It started with learning that breakdowns could be curbed (could be supplemented) by a bout of physical pain: a measurement of his agony. It started simple enough.

The first time he’d made little markings into skin, sudden accessories that bleed ugly bracelets into him, Yusaku sighed in relief.

What was this feeling? What was this sudden pressure and power, this rush he’d so deprived?

During the Lost Incident, Yusaku had been monitored by scientists, by an AI, by a child just as young and by God all the while. In the aftermath, Yusaku is alone in his apartment. No scientists take his broken mind apart but no Gods and no guardians can see him tear himself apart.

  


1.  
Fresh from the incident, Yusaku fought with a nurse. She’d only meant to stick the IV in and wound up making an enemy of him. All kicking and screaming, he blanched and buckled at the sight of the needle and a bag on a wire. His stomach turned and shook.

Counting backwards through the alphabet, she sang him a song and the tears split down the sides of his face and flooded into his ears as he rocked both feet. The lullaby drowned him out as she slid the needle to the vein, and all at once he felt so cold, so _cold_ and so impossibly alone.

The six year old thought he might die where he lie right then and there, as the nurse mopped his tears with a rubber gloved finger and smiled too sweetly for him to bear. The lights were too bright. He didn’t dare jostle his arm. Feeling the taste of salt and plastic in his mouth, Yusaku hiccuped back a sob and cried for safety, cried for no pain, _no more pain please,_ and a blanket so he could fall asleep.

This bed was the right amount of uncomfortable, you see.

  


9.  
Yusaku watched Kusanagi dissipate into code, the very same he studied and relentlessly committed to memory. It’s almost like a joke.

For every self-inflicted scar upon his skin, for every one that couldn’t be magically kissed better, for every ugly breath that he couldn’t get out, that resembled a cry, that tore his insides out… Kusanagi loved him like his own brother.

For every bit of data that he transformed into, Yusaku felt his heart break into a million more pieces. All the smile in his soul could not be so light as to be carried along the wind and compartmentalized somewhere. He was much taller than Yusaku. His voice deeper too. He was older and smarter. He had a laugh that made Yusaku’s chest feel all funny. He couldn't be captured in a flutter of pixels.

That wasn't him. That couldn't ever be him.

“I leave the rest to you,” he’d said but Yusaku couldn't stop his legs from wobbling and taking him under. The tide he’d been afraid of swallowed him up. He'd opened his mouth and it surged through him.

_I’m alone now. I’m alone. I’m finally all alone._

_I let you in. I let you down. I did this all on my own._

_I fucked it up._

Yusaku had to pick himself back up.

_Just let me sleep._

He wanted the storage unit with the port-o-potty in the corner and a blanket to wrap up in.

  


2.  
Nothing tasted good. Putting something into his mouth that he hadn’t fought tooth and nail for felt horribly wrong. Yusaku picked at his plate dispassionately. He was right handed. His right arm was hooked to the bag. His left arm moved slow and alien-like, rolling grains of white rice around as his belly locked up. He deserved none of it.

It wasn’t the fact that it was hospital food. It was the fact that it was _food_ and he hadn’t bit the skin off his fingers for it.

  


10.  
“Kusanagi-san was proud of me,” he says and he’s right.

Not a soul stands beside him. He could count the AI. He _should_ count the AI. Kusanagi would want him to.

Yusaku stands tall and proud in the Link Vrains. At his home, he lays bare where his symptoms can be seen: the scarlet scarring in his wrists and thighs and the way his ribs poke out and the way his breath turns shallow as he sleeps. A boy ruined sits recovering, littered in ten years worth of decoration. In his dreams, he becomes Playmaker and he fights to take back his life. When he awakes, he’ll brew a cup of coffee with his friend.

Kusanagi will smile and nudge him with pride, ask how he’d get so good at this in such a short amount of time.

His life will continue, whether the Lost Incident wants it to or not. He’s deserving of it, whether he’s bled enough or not.

(Which, assuredly, he has.)

“I just want to go home,” Yusaku says, and with the magic vested in him by a terrible ten year old tragedy, he is.


End file.
